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How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

fuchsia.googlesource.com

101–110 of 172 posts

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#101
post #2

So I'm not clear what the puropse of fuchsia is. I understand it's an os which may replace android or chomeos but why the move away from linux based systems? Both are open source platforms.

I'm interested in it from a purely technological point of view. Linux is almost 30 years old, and it's architecture is almost 50 years old. Xnu, which is the kernel of iOS is a bit more modern, but Apple has gradually moved it back towards a monolithic BSDish, posix-compliant kernel over the years.

We've actually learned a few things about operating systems since 1970, and today's hardware vastly different from the time-sharing systems of that day. It would be really useful to just implement an OS based on more modern ideas and see where it goes.

I have no idea what Google is planning for Fuscia, but I hope that's part of it.

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#102
post #99

My take is that Fuchsia is Google's attempt to unify their mobile ecosystem under one proprietary OS like Apple does with iOS (yes, yes I hear you, "But Darwin is OSS..." try making that into iOS though...): which is a good move for Google.

> under one proprietary OS fuchsia and all it's components are licensed under BSD 3 clause, MIT, Apache 2.0

Which means they can fork it anytime into a proprietary one.

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#103
post #2

So I'm not clear what the puropse of fuchsia is. I understand it's an os which may replace android or chomeos but why the move away from linux based systems? Both are open source platforms.

>but why the move away from linux based systems? Both are open source platforms

Perhaps because whether it's "open source" is not that much of a concern, but rather whether it has the kind of control (over its evolution) and/or next generation design they want?

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#104
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>open source platforms Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux, so that Google and its partners can release products to users that have proprietary modifications to the kernel, without giving those same users access to the source code of the kernel. That would of course be a disaster for user autonomy and freedom, but why should Google care about that... Edit: This isn…

"Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux," Certainly why? I know, in fact, this is pretty much a non-consideration, so i'm really curious what makes you believe it is. In fact, the fuchsia kernel is completely open source, so ... If you were to bug the SFLC/others, you'd see Google is, in fact, quite happy releasing kernel changes, and is pretty much one of the only co…

>In fact, the fuchsia kernel is completely open source, so ...

That's orthogonal. Open source != GPL (which lots of companies avoid). Or is it GPL too?

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#105
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Part of the motivation is certainly to get away from the GPL requirements of using Linux," Certainly why? I know, in fact, this is pretty much a non-consideration, so i'm really curious what makes you believe it is. In fact, the fuchsia kernel is completely open source, so ... If you were to bug the SFLC/others, you'd see Google is, in fact, quite happy releasing kernel changes, and is pretty much one of the only co…

> why? Because cloud providers have started to build their own hardware to eke out performance advantages versus other cloud providers. It's not a far stretch to conclude that Google will prioritize its kernel's development for its proprietary hardware and not have to release any of the secret sauce to the public.

If you aren't distributing the binaries, you don't have to release your changes to GPL software. That's what the AGPL tried to fix.

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#106
post #102
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> under one proprietary OS fuchsia and all it's components are licensed under BSD 3 clause, MIT, Apache 2.0

Which means they can fork it anytime into a proprietary one.

They can do that regardless of the license since they own the copyright. As long as they do not accept external contributions or require a CLA it does not matter what license they offer, they can still make future versions proprietary.

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#107

Sounds kind of like the rebirth of plan9

Well they got the same artist that made glen the rabbit to make the gopher for Go. Maybe they can get that artist to do a mascot for Fuchsia.

Renée French is the artist. She is married to Rob Pike.

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#109
How to request capabilities at run time?

Android has shown that the approach of asking for a list of capabilities while installing does not work for user-facing applications. Apps will grab just as much as capabilities as possible and users will blindly accept the long list without reading.

Re: How sandboxing works in Fuchsia

#110
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means they can fork it anytime into a proprietary one.

They can do that regardless of the license since they own the copyright. As long as they do not accept external contributions or require a CLA it does not matter what license they offer, they can still make future versions proprietary.

True, that's why there needs to be a distinction between "GPL" and "GPL with CLA".
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